Saturday Night Live Wiki:Miscellaneous Show Trivia
The following is trivia regarding Saturday Night Live * George Carlin was the show's first host. Instead of taking part in sketches, as Carlin (who was high at the time on cocaine) became too nervous and backed out of the sketches, Carlin performed snippets of his stand up comedy routines. Carlin returned to host on Season 10 and actually appeared in sketches. * Steve Martin was a frequent guest host of the program and even had popular recurring characters. However, contrary to popular belief, Martin was never a regular member of the cast. * The recurring character that has appeared the most is Don Novello's Father Guido Sarducci with a whopping 31 appearances over the course of 17 years. Novello was not a cast member for most of these appearances and the Sarducci character was not even created specifically for the show. * Morwenna Banks holds the record for the shortest tenure of a repertory player, with only four episodes (April–May 1995). Emily Prager holds the record for shortest tenure of a featured player; she was credited in one episode (April 11, 1981) but did not appear. Laurie Metcalf was also credited as a featured player for only that episode, but did make an appearance. **This makes Prager the only cast member to be credited but not appear on SNL. She did make cameos outside of that episode. * Although Darrell Hammond holds the record for longest tenure by a repertory player with 11 consecutive seasons (about 200 episodes), Al Franken has appeared in about 140 episodes over 12 seasons (1977–80) and (1985–95) as a featured player. * During the rebuilding of SNL in the early 1980s, Dick Ebersol wanted John Candy and Catherine O'Hara (both of whom were on SCTV at the time) to be cast members on the show. John Candy declined, and Catherine O'Hara quit after Michael O'Donoghue yelled at everyone involved with the 1980-1981 season for the lackluster writing and acting. * The cold opening occasionally varies from the traditional "Live From New York...", usually to follow the consistency of a certain sketch. **In the 1981-1982 season, the traditional cold opening was done away with entirely (returning the next season) and there are some episodes in the 1984-1985 season that have a cold opening (with the Pamela Sue Martin/Power Station episode being an exception since that had no cold opening to begin with), but it doesn't end with someone shouting, "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" **The 1985-1986 season episode hosted by George Wendt and Francis Ford Coppola is one of the only Lorne Michaels-era episode to have a cold opening that doesn't end with someone saying, "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" **The 1990-1991 season episode hosted by Alec Baldwin had a McLaughlin Group parody sketch as cold open. Dana Carvey (in character as John McLaughlin) asked the panelists in the skit how the show was opened. They all answered with the show's normal opening, but John (Dana) instead said they were wrong and opened the show with the words "Show, show, show, here we go!" **Another was a 2000-2001 episode hosted by Jennifer Lopez, where Will Ferrell (playing George W. Bush) ended the opening with "Live from New York, it's Jennifer Lopez's booty!" * The opening montage of the Charlton Heston/Paul Westerberg episode from Season 19 featured the entire cast replaced with apes, a continuing gag from the cold open, where Heston, in preparing for that week's show, lies down for a nap and slips into a deep slumber, and wakes up in the distant future, where apes have taken over SNL. While the cast members' names were all PotA-esque, G.E. Smith and the Saturday Night Live Band were still credited as such (though their photo was modified to fit the theme of apes.) When Heston was escorted, shackled in irons, out to Home Base by the apes for his monologue, the SNL Band and audience in front of Home Base were all dressed as apes. This gag ended with the monologue. * The youngest cast member hired was Anthony Michael Hall who was 17 years old when he joined the cast in 1985. * The oldest cast member hired was Leslie Jones, who was 47 years old when she joined the cast in 2014. The previous record-holder was Michael McKean, who was 46 years old when he joined the show in 1994. * The oldest cast member to perform is Darrell Hammond, who was 50 years old. * Eddie Murphy is the only person to have hosted the show while still a cast member; this occurred during Season 8 (December 11, 1982), when Murphy filled in for a sick Nick Nolte. * Dan Aykroyd and Michael McKean are the only performers to appear as cast members, hosts, and as musical guests. While a cast member, Aykroyd appeared as Elwood Blues from The Blues Brothers; McKean appeared as David St. Hubbins from Spinal Tap in May 1984, hosted six months later, and became a cast member in 1994. * Michael McKean and Billy Crystal are the only two people to join the cast after hosting the show. * Harry Shearer and Brian Doyle-Murray are the only two cast members to work under both Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. Shearer in 1979 and 1984, and Doyle-Murray in 1979 and 1981. In addition, Doyle-Murray also worked under one-season producer Jean Doumanian as a writer (as did Terry Sweeney, who worked under Doumanian from 1980 to 1981, then become a writer and castmember for Lorne Michaels in 1985). Jim Downey, a featured player and writer under Lorne in 1979-80, was also a writer during 1984-1985 (under Ebersol). * The eldest host was Betty White, having done so at 88 years of age on May 8, 2010. **Two other elderly hosts were Ruth Gordon, who was age 80 years, 2 months, 24 days, in the episode aired on January 22, 1977. She was 15 days older than Miskel Spillman, aged 80 years, 2 months, and 9 days, in the episode aired on December 17 of that same year. * The youngest host was Drew Barrymore, at age 7, in the episode aired on November 20, 1982 (the youngest host before Drew Barrymore was Jodie Foster, who was 14 when she first hosted in the 1976-1977 season). * The longest span of time between two hosting appearances belongs to Jeff Bridges. Bridges has a 27-year gap between his first appearance in 1983 and his second appearance in 2010). **Bruce Willis, who hosted back in 1989, returned to host in 2014, twenty-four seasons after his first appearance. **Sigourney Weaver has the third longest span of time between two hosting appearances. She returned 23 years, 3 months after her 1986 episode to host in 2010. * The longest span between musical guest appearances goes to Elton John. John was the musical guest for a 1982 episode hosted by Johnny Cash, making his appearance gap roughly 29 years later in 2011. * Some celebrities who were almost cast members on the show were Jim Carrey (1980), John Goodman (1980), Robert Townsend (1980), Paul Reubens (1980), Geena Davis (1984), Lisa Kudrow (1990) and Jennifer Aniston. * In 2003, Kenan Thompson became the first cast member born after SNL's premiere in 1975 (Thompson was born in 1978). * Gerald Ford is the only-sitting U.S. President to open the show with, "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night" when Ron Nessen hosted. Other U.S. Presidents who appeared on the show included George H. W. Bush on October 22, 1994 after his term and Barack Obama, who also uttered the famous line on November 3, 2007 before becoming president. * Mike Myers based his character Dieter, host of the avant-garde German TV talk show 'Sprockets', after a real person, a student whom Myers met in art college. The real Dieter would often say things like "I once had a course where we had to touch tapioca, styrofoam and monkeys. Michael, perhaps we can go to the zoo and touch monkeys." (thus giving rise to the TV Dieter's catchphrase "Would you like to touch my monkey?") * A film version of 'Sprockets' was planned, but abandoned after Mike Myers became dissatisfied with his own script. It would have involved Dieter traveling to the USA to rescue Klaus, his pet monkey. This aborted production would later be the crux of a 2000 lawsuit between Myers and Ron Howard, which was settled by Myers' agreeing to appear in The Cat in the Hat. * Linda Richman, the host of the recurring sketch Coffee Talk, is based on Mike Myers' mother-in-law. Before Myers began appearing in the sketch as Richman, he appeared in it as host Paul Baldwin. * John Belushi was credited in the opening montage of the Christopher Lee/Meat Loaf episode as Kevin Scott, a continuing gag from the cold opening, where he was supposedly "moving up" from SNL to star as Grizzly Adams on the NBC program of the same name. Belushi had to change his name to Kevin Scott because NBC felt that his name was too synonymous with comedy and satire for Grizzly Adams. * Cast members who have cameoed on SNL before becoming cast members include: A. Whitney Brown (performed stand-up in a 1984 episode), Yvonne Hudson (worked as an extra on some episodes from Seasons 3, 4, and 5), Denny Dillon (appeared in the first season of SNL as a guest performer), Rob Riggle (appeared in Season 29 in a fake promo for a kids' version of Fear Factor), Phil Hartman (was credited as a writer for the season 11 episode hosted by Pee Wee Herman and appeared as a Pilgrim in the Pee Wee Herman Thanksgiving Special sketch), Will Ferrell (appeared in a pre-taped fake commercial on season 19 about a cruise line with basketball player Manute Bol as the captain) and Ben Stiller (appeared in an SNL short film in Season 12). * Other cast members who appeared before being cast members worked behind the scenes on the show, like writers Al Franken, Alan Zwiebel, Jason Sudeikis, Tom Schiller, Tina Fey, Terry Sweeney, Tom Davis, David Spade, Jim Downey, Adam Sandler, and Brian Doyle-Murray, and SNL band leader, Paul Shaffer. * During the first season, besides the usual comedy sketches, Albert Brooks contributed short films and a rather adult cast of Muppets acted in a weird setting known as the Land of Gorch. The Muppet sketches were not liked by audiences and writers Al Franken and Alan Zweibel and only lasted one season. * The highest rated (according to Nielsen) episode aired on October 13, 1979 (Steve Martin/Blondie). * The lowest ever rating/share for the show was 4.2/16 (on November 8, 1975) with host Candice Bergen, and musical guest Esther Phillips. * Though never a credited player on the show, Bruce McCulloch, cast member of another Lorne Michaels/Broadway Video production, Kids in the Hall, has appeared on SNL in various cameo roles over the years, most notably in a fake commercial on the Pee-Wee Herman/Queen Ida episode from season 11 about a teenager being pressured by his peers to join the Army, and in a number of short films he directed which aired during the 1994-1995 season. * During the early years, the format of the show was not completely set in stone. For example, on the second episode, hosted by Paul Simon, included a reunion with his former musical partner, Art Garfunkel. Only a few comedy sketches were featured during the episode, with others dropped in order to allow Simon and Garfunkel to perform an extended musical set. On another occasion, Beat generation author William S. Burroughs appeared on the program and read passages from his books, to mixed response. * The Rob Reiner episode, third show of Season 1, is the first (and only episode) to end without any credit/goodnight segment. The original live broadcast ran long, and by the time the last sketch ended and the two minute final internal station break began, there was exactly 2 minutes left until the scheduled program end. The show didn't come back from break, and stations cut the feed. **Note: In repeats of the show, a slideshow of Bumper graphics with the credits superimposed over them, with the ending theme music underneath, was attached to the end of the last sketch. **This has come close to happening from time to time in more recent years, such as the Lindsay Lohan/Pearl Jam episode from Season 31, whose situation was actually identical to the Reiner episode. It was scheduled to end at 12:59:25 EST, but as it returned from the last internal break at 12:59:25, it went until 12:59:37. A 20 second promo scheduled to run and end at 12:59:45 the promo was replaced with a 10 second version, ending the feed at 12:59:47, only two seconds past schedule. **Note: Occasionally, the show's ending will take up the net ID time, and some stations will simply cut off at that point, whether the feed has finished or not. The more recent (from the mid-80s onward) use of terminal "network IDs" (typically, promos for NBC shows) at the end of SNL broadcasts, allows for a "safety zone" of sorts for the director, should the show run long. * While SNL has used Commercial bumpers like many other late-night programmes, theirs have, since mid-way through Season 1, been different in both their unique weekly nature and their evolving and engaging art. A typical episode will feature as many as 11 unique bumper graphics, featuring the host and musical guest in a series of inventive poses. These graphics have deviated on a few occasions. The first several episodes featured more standard late-night-style bumpers, with pictures of NYC, rather than the week's host. **Note: Until 1987, musical guests weren't usually featured in bumpers. During the Ebersol era, due to Ebersol's comparatively large number of shows without a host, the cast would be featured in bumpers of host-less episodes. * The first episode in which The Blues Brothers appeared was hosted by Steve Martin (April 22, 1978) * In issue #74 of Marvel Team-Up (cover dated October, 1978), the Not Ready For Prime Time Players (Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Bill Murray, Laraine Newman, Gilda Radner) and Lorne Micheals teamed up with comic book superhero Spider-Man, making them among the few real people to have had a superhero team up. * According to his website, Dane Cook (who hosted December 3, 2005) performed the longest opening monologue in the history of the show. It consisted of jokes from his stand-up act. * When Kevin Spacey hosted the show in 1997, one pair of sketches spoofed the screen tests of Star Wars. Spacey played, among others, Christopher Walken auditioning for the role of Han Solo. Walken really was considered for that role before Harrison Ford was chosen. * Chris Parnell isn't the only cast member to get fired and rehired. Jim Belushi was fired on the 1983-1984 season, then brought back a week later. Tim Meadows was also fired when Lorne was rebuilding his cast for Season 21, but Meadows didn't miss any episodes since the cast overhaul between Seasons 20 and 21 took place during the summer and no new episodes of SNL aired during that time. * Comedians who have appeared on SNL to perform between sketches include Joel Hodgson (of MST3K fame), Harry Anderson, Paula Poundstone, Sam Kinison, Steve Wright, Penn and Teller, and Andy Kaufman. * Dana Carvey holds the record for the number of times opening SNL with, "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night." *Prior to season 40, Christine Ebersole was the only cast member whose name was never read aloud by longtime announcer Don Pardo, as she was the only cast member whose tenure was limited only to season 7. * Don Pardo's announcing booth is located in the exact same spot on which legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini's podium once stood, when he conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra in his famous and long-running series of radio concerts. * In the premiere episode, Dick Ebersol was credited as "Executive Producer for NBC." The credit drew immediate ire from NBC Vice-president of Talent David Tebet, because of a network policy that prohibited any NBC executives from taking any on-air credit for programming. According to the "Backstage History" book, Ebersol told Tebet that the credit was Lorne's idea. * On April 29, 2006, Stephen Colbert, who briefly served as a SNL staff writer during the 1990s, reprised the voice of Ace from The Ambiguously Gay Duo, a frequent role during and after his writing tenure for the show, while hosting a Best of Saturday Night Live TV Funhouse special. * Conan O'Brien is the only SNL staff writer who was not an official member of the SNL cast to host SNL. However, he did make several appearances in sketches during his tenure at SNL. O'Brien hosted on March 10, 2001. * Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Steve Carell are the only hosts in SNL history to be married to ex-cast members (Brad Hall and Nancy Walls, respectively). Louis-Dreyfus herself was also a cast member on the show from 1982 to 1985. * NBC received 4,484 complaints after Sinéad O'Connor tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on air, and received 725 calls supporting O'Connor. * Roseanne Barr hosted the show three times under three different names--Roseanne, Roseanne Barr, and Roseanne Arnold. She hosted the latter with her then-husband Tom Arnold. * The word "cheeseburger" was spoken 80 times during the Olympia Restaurant Sketch. The catchphrases "Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger!" and "No Coke. Pepsi!" is coined from what the former owner of the Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago would say when someone ordered a cheeseburger. *So far, two females have hosted while pregnant, namely Tina Fey on May 7, 2011 and Kerry Washington on November 2, 2013 (whose pregnancy was only announced three days before the premiere of the episode).